The Sunday morning news. [volume] (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1886-1891, 1887-01-30

ABOUT MAYOR CLEVELAND.


views" published in both the daily after
noon sheets of NJ onday, that seem from
the fact that both are in precisely the
same language, to have been written by
himself, as having said that we made a
personal attack upon him last Sunday.
Mayor Cleveland knows that the article
in which we criticised his course, in the
matter of the Pinkerton guards, was not
in the nature of personal attack He
knows that we have no desire to make q
personal attack on him. We have no
personal attack to make upon anybody
but we have perfect right, in common
with every other citizen, to pass judg
ment upon the public acts and declarations
of public official; and that we assumed
to do last Sunday morning in the article
of which the Mayor complains. 1t graft
fies US to know that we have been com.
mended in all quarters for having the
candor AMI manhood to take issue with
1t is as plain as day light can make it that if
the Mayor had not, by his attacks on the
Pinkerton guards, singled them out for
the jeers and assaults of the crowd, the
murder of To mmy Hogan would not
have been committed That it was per-
fectly unjustidable IS beyond question;
but if the Mayor had not egged the crowd
on the Pinkertons would have looked in
vain for the smallest possible excuse or
opportunity for the indulgence Of their
murderous propensities. We said, and we
say, that nothing but the good sense of
the men who are striking for their bread
and butter has saved the City from the
collision between these imported ruffians
and the populace that the Mayor seems
to have been anxious to precipitate. Even
in the interviews in which ne denounces us
for having, as he declares, misrepressnted
him, he bears fresh evidence to the just
ice of our criticisms. The interviews
say designed-to arouse the sense of wrong
with which the strikers are suffering, TO
deeds of vengeance and blood. He is
quoted as having said:
.They [tke strikersl stood around the dead body
of that murdered boy. with his yid face turned up
to theirs in mute appeals for vengeance, and they
remembered their pledge to keep the peace, even
while the murderers stood in plain sight, and it
was in their power to have torn them to pieces"
Now here, in the very breath in which
he denounces us for having said that hi s
utterances tended TO riot, he says as
squarely as he can that the mute appeal of
the liyid face of the murdered boy might
well have nerved the strikers to tear the
Pinkertons to pieces. Such an attack as
he here almnst excuses in advance, could
have produced nothing short of riot.
Such utterances as these on the part of
public official are legitimate topics of
editorial criticism, and we reflect the COM
mon sense and common decency Of this
community in condemping and denounce-
ing them. 1t is indeed to the credit of the
strikers that in spite of ali this encourage
ment from the chief peace officer Of the
city, to bloody breaches of the peace,
these oppressed men continue to conduct
themselves with commsndabe discretion
and respect for the law.
At the same time that we defend our
selves against the charge of having made
a personal attack on the Mayor, we shall
stop to resist what seems to us to be a
very personal attack by the Mayor upon
us. In the interviews to which we have
referred, the Mayor declares that the
articles in the Net0 York Times have been
inspired IN some cases and written in
others by the Editor of this paper 1t
would be immaterial to the point under
discussion whether this is true or not, if
the Mayor had not brought it int contro.
versy His very plain design is to make
this paper or its editor responsible for the
editorial sentiments about the strike ex-
pressed in the Ne,c Yorlc Times. We de-
sire to say that the editor of this paper
has nothing whatever to do with the
editorial department Of that paper, and
that he has never said or written or sug-
gested q lire to its editorial writera as to
the view they might properly take of the
situation here. Nor has he ever written
line of the statements published in the